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Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Amazon Cloud Drive will now sync files

Amazon has upped its game and is all set to take on cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive. The two-year-old Amazon Cloud Drive has finally gained the ability to sync files, allowing you to access them from various devices wherever you are.

The Mac and Windows versions of Amazon Cloud Drive have been tweaked to allow file syncing, a feature that has been available in rival apps like Dropbox since a long time now. The feature had been missing in Amazon’s cloud service, owing to which it never really stood out as an option to store files in for most users.

You will need to connect computers you work on with your Amazon Cloud Drive account for it to sync all your important files stored in the service. The files will also be available on the website, quite like Dropbox, for the sake of convenience. This way, even if you don’t go through the tedious task of installing and connecting your computer to your account, you will be able to access your files.

The best bit about Amazon’s cloud service is that it offers a whopping 5GB of space free as compared to Dropbox’s 2GB. While it has taken Amazon this long to manage to catch up, the company seems to be building up a strong base. It already has an Android app up and running, but an iOS one isn’t on the horizon yet. One thing to keep in mind though is that syncing is only limited to the desktop apps yet.

So, unless you are a hardcore user of some other cloud service, it would be worth your while to give Amazon’s Cloud Drive a shot.

Amazon seems to be working overtime these days to enrich consumer experience. While the company is in talks to purchase book recommendations service Goodreads, it has also developed a Kindle app for Blackberry 10. Amazon has also made a “Send to Kindle” button available on some websites so that it becomes easy for users having the device to read clippings from the web.

It looks like Amazon will be dipping its toes in the music subscription business too. The world’s biggest online merchant is said to be in talks with music labels to launch a Spotify-like service based on subscriptions.

Sources have told The Verge that Amazon is the latest – behind Google and Apple – to express interest in the subscription-based model of accessing music, which is considered to be the next big thing in the music industry. While the model has not exactly taken off, services like Spotify and Pandora show exactly how much potential the idea of paying to stream music has.

According to sources, the kind of model Amazon has shown a keen interest in is very similar to Spotify’s “on-demand” service. Amazon’s idea of music subscription could take off very easily. It could be the next natural step for the company as it already has the infrastructure to back this move. Amazon has a cloud-based music storage system as well as a cloud player. The company only needs to put in a subscription-based access system in place, and the service is pretty much good to go.